My political rivals forget to register their domain name. Should I grab it?

Today in Internet ethics: pointing an opposing domain name to The Onion.

With candidates and political action committees (PACs) working 24/7 to get their desired results on Election Day, strange ethical conundrums arise on a daily basis. Case in point: is it foul play to register the domain name connected to your opponents' PAC if they forget to do so in time—and then to point the whole domain to a satirical political article from The Onion?

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Arlington Heights is a sprawling middle-class Chicago suburb of 75,000. On the ballot tomorrow is a bond issue that would give the Arlington Heights Park District the green light to raise up to $39,000,000 to improve the city's aging recreation facilities. As with most issues that involve raising property taxes, the bond issue has evoked passions on both sides; supporters and opponents both took out full-page ads in today's Daily Herald, a local newspaper (select "Northwest Suburbs" and "11-5-2012" and you can see the ads on pages 38 and 39.)

Taxpayers United forgot to register its domain name.

"Independent, bipartisan, grass-roots Political Action Committee" Taxpayers United opposes the bond issue, and its ad directs readers to visit a website for more information. But the PAC made one small oversight: it failed to actually register a domain name. The gaffe was noticed by an Arlington Heights resident and friend of mine—we'll call him Bob, since he asked not to be identified out of concern for how a political issue might reflect on his employer—on the opposite side of the issue.

"We saw the [newspaper ad] and we know people who are involved in the 'pro' campaign," Bob told me. "When we saw the name Taxpayers United, which we knew was a national-level PAC organization, we were irritated to see national money pouring into a local-level issue." (Taxpayers United of America is the name of the national group; the local Taxpayers United has no direct connection with the larger group. Though Bob assumed a link, it's not clear that the local group does in fact receive money from the national group.)

Bob has a couple of small children and would gladly pay what supporters describe as a property tax increase of $2.20 per month to improve the park district's facilities; opponents say the increase could lead to tax hikes of up to 23 percent annually and that cheaper options (such as facility renovation) exist.

After pointing out the PAC's gaffe on Facebook, Bob's friends encouraged him to take action. So Bob did what any self-respecting computer geek would do—he registered the domain name himself to become the owner of nstaxpayersunited.com.

Bob thought about using the domain to throw up a "quick page making fun of" his opponents but decided on an easier way of getting his point across. As of publication, the domain currently redirects to an article on The Onion's website called "Citizens Form Massive Special Disinterest Group." (Update: Bob tells me via Facebook that the domain now points to the correct site: "Well Eric, thanks to your reporting, I was able to figure where the guy was hosting his site (even though he hadn't responded to my email). I changed the name server entries to point the ones at Word Press and his website is working now.")

Change of heart

When contacted by Ars, Roland Ley, the local head of Taxpayers United, seemed a bit confused about the situation. "I'm working with WordPress and I'm not sure what happened," he told me. "They cancelled [the website]—hopefully they can retrieve it."

Ley had apparently been using WordPress to set up a site devoted to fighting the referendum but hadn't "been to the website" in about six months. He said he had only found out about the site not working after the ad was "already in process." When told that the domain name now pointed to The Onion, Ley sighed.

"I'll have to pursue it, I guess," he said.

He won't have to pursue it very far. Bob has since decided to turn the domain name over to Ley's group and, in the meantime, to point the site's IP address to Taxpayers United's WordPress site (the ownership transfer process can be somewhat drawn out.)

"I feel a slight twinge of a guilty conscience that I am in an incorrect way influencing the outcome of the election," Bob admitted.

Promoted Comments

The Usual Disclaimer: IANAL. I am a law student. Law students are incapable of giving legal advice. This is not legal advice. You should trust my advice about as much as you'd trust your former roommate, your dog, or your toaster, assuming none of them have law degrees.

Registration of a domain name in this manner is probably safe from a U.S. legal court standpoint, although there's an inherent danger in taking inflammatory actions likely to result in a lawsuit against you; even frivolous lawsuits are tremendously expensive to defend against. Any litigious organization would throw everything including the kitchen sink at you, if they've got the capital to blow. So doing something in this manner would likely result in the usual publication claims of libel, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, quantum meruit, kitchen sink, etc.

The faster and cheaper course of action in this case would be a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution (UDRP) claim. For a few thousand, you can plead case in front of an arbitration panel that a domain name infringes upon a trademark in which you have rights and get that domain name transferred to you if the registrant has no legitimate rights and has registered and/or is using the domain in bad faith. UDRP claims involve proving three elements: 1) Complainant has trademark in the name, 2) Registrant has no rights in the domain name, and 3) Registrant has registered and/or is using the Domain Name in bad faith (whether it's "and" or "or" somewhat depends on the arbitration panel you plead before).

A quick glance over at the USPTO shows that Taxpayers United doesn't have a federal trademark in the name TAXPAYERS UNITED (word marks that are generic such as this are often hard to enforce, though it can be registered regardless). They might be able to claim a common law trademark since they do business under the name "Taxpayers United." Usually common law trademark claims are much harder to prove under UDRP, but they have been done. More interesting to the issue here is whether the Registrant in this case had any rights or legitimate interests in the name and whether that registration would be deemed "in bad faith."

Likely a registrant pulling a stunt like this has no rights or interests in the name. To establish that you have rights or legitimate interest in the domain, you have to show that people know you commercially under that domain name (so that "Amazon.com" could not suffer loss of their domain name from someone who owns a trademark for "The Amazons," for example, even assuming Amazon didn't hold the trademark to Amazon [they do]) or that you are a licensee or that you have some other kind of fair use. Fair use is the biggest issue here, because the Registrant of this case clearly has no affiliation or rights in the Taxpayers United name. His use, in this case, is political commentary. Usually political commentary can be fair use, but I'm not sure if the use in this particular case, which may not speak to the "heart" is of the matter but instead arguably to "general satire," but I'm not going to get into a legal analysis on the issue because I'm not qualified to do so.

Third, the "bad faith" factor may also be an issue here. Normally this factor is best demonstrated by cybersquatting, whereby registrants intend to profit off of the name by means of trademark confusion (i.e. being a lamprey and hoping people hit your site expecting to get to the trademark holder's website). The registrant here isn't cybersquatting, but there is an argument that they are intentionally trying to profit off of the TAXPAYERS UNITED trademark by capitalizing on the confusion created in this article. This may be sufficient to establish bad faith registration, especially because the registrant registered the website intentionally to deprive the mark-holder of the ability to register the site.

This is all assuming that a generic "common law" trademark holds up, which it might not. This would be a much harder UDRP case to decide than most of the "Looking for 14th century trebuchet construction? We've got your hot 14th century trebuchet construction right here! Hot steamy 14th century trebuchet construction action for your pleasure!" sites banished to the underworld of the internet. [As a side note, look how far we've come that those are no longer the mainstay of Google search results!]

Generally UDRP is favorable to complainants, who get to choose in which forum to lodge their complaint. But the advantage is that if you register a site and lose it under a UDRP complaint, you don't lose anything but the registration (and thus the fees you paid to register) and maybe legal fees if you decide to challenge it; there are no damages.

Is this type of registration a good idea? Well at best, it's not going to hurt you. You might get a good laugh out of it and some site traffic to the ONN, You could lose the site but not be out more than the few bucks for registration. You might tick off a few fans who were duped into clicking on your site, but there's nothing particularly nefarious about the political commentary; you weren't trying to phish or cybersquat or necessarily profit off of the site to the detriment of the holder.

At worst, though, you'll anger an irrational person who will "sue you for all you're worth" in a court of law, consequences be damned. You'd probably be much more likely of winning your case, since you're not doing anything seemingly defamatory or depriving them of property or rights that they explicitly own, but you're still going to pay out the wazoo in hiring a lawyer to represent your defense. Even if you get it dismissed on summary judgment, you're still going to be a few thousand in fees for what would have been easily avoidable.

So that's the tradeoff. Is the laugh worth the perhaps marginal risk of lawsuit? Transferring the domain name to the proper organization is the best thing to do for self-protection. You made your point but you acted in good faith to keep from depriving them of the site. If you find yourself in a similar boat, I'd be mindful of the people from whom you are depriving the registration rights. Are they likely to sue you? If so, don't put your hand in front of your face and say, "Hit my hand!" by registering the site. You could register the site and offer to sell for less than the UDRP filing cost, but that's kind of an asshat thing to do. The two most conscionable things to do are to 1) leave it alone, or 2) register it, poke fun for a bit, then transfer to the "rightful owners" as the registrant did in this case.

When you attack an opponent in this manner you ultimately end up only preaching to the choir.

While making yourself look childish in the eyes of your opponent. He may have influenced the outcome of the election, but it may of not been in the way he thinks.

Slightly relevant: Since it was brought up about the slight tax increase. I think the big problem people see with huge projects like this is that they almost always go over budget and there is a huge potential for project-creep. Resulting in the money going to some completely irrelevant project.

It sounds like the opportunity has passed, but putting up a generally conciliatory landing page with a time delayed redirect might be pretty cool:

"Dear supporter of $Opponent, we realized that their website link wasn't working properly(whatever language Joe Sickpack can understand). We'll send you to their site in 10 seconds. Thanks for visiting,

Sincerely,

The Nice Party"

That undermines confidence that your opponent knows what the hell they're doing without doing it in a rude way.

Is it just me, or does any group whose name includes "taxpayer" instantly lose anyone else's vote?

I'm glad that "taxpayers" are united. However, if the only thing "uniting" you is the fact that you first and foremost identify as payers of taxes - as opposed to beneficiaries of services and common welfare provided by those taxes - there's generally something wrong with you, in my experience. I wouldn't want to work with or for a company called "Paycheck Issuers United" either.

Just a quick tip. If you are an anti-tax organization try naming a front organization and website something relevant to the issue at hand. I think "Taxpayers United" (combining the negative associations of any group coalescing around taxation with an association to Citizens United ... ick.) would have avoided the whole ordeal if they'd just run the ad under the name "Park Goers For Reform" or something less generic.

Personally, I agree with both of his actions. I would have supported it if he continued to have it point to The Onion, but it seems a rare bit of humanity and generosity to just give it to the company that forgot to register it in the first place.

At least his first thought wasn't malicious, maybe there's hope after all.

Sorry, the internet is as common as common should be. Regardless of the political persuasion, he should have kept the domain out of the hands of the clods who screwed it up. No one, no one, no one is there to rectify a mistake in the capitalist world if such an oversight had been made. And yes, you have to react exactly as your opposition would have in the same circumstances. He owed them nothing and should bill them for his time and efforts to straighten this out. This is 101 incompetence going on here We develop nothing without securing the domain first

The Usual Disclaimer: IANAL. I am a law student. Law students are incapable of giving legal advice. This is not legal advice. You should trust my advice about as much as you'd trust your former roommate, your dog, or your toaster, assuming none of them have law degrees.

Registration of a domain name in this manner is probably safe from a U.S. legal court standpoint, although there's an inherent danger in taking inflammatory actions likely to result in a lawsuit against you; even frivolous lawsuits are tremendously expensive to defend against. Any litigious organization would throw everything including the kitchen sink at you, if they've got the capital to blow. So doing something in this manner would likely result in the usual publication claims of libel, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, quantum meruit, kitchen sink, etc.

The faster and cheaper course of action in this case would be a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution (UDRP) claim. For a few thousand, you can plead case in front of an arbitration panel that a domain name infringes upon a trademark in which you have rights and get that domain name transferred to you if the registrant has no legitimate rights and has registered and/or is using the domain in bad faith. UDRP claims involve proving three elements: 1) Complainant has trademark in the name, 2) Registrant has no rights in the domain name, and 3) Registrant has registered and/or is using the Domain Name in bad faith (whether it's "and" or "or" somewhat depends on the arbitration panel you plead before).

A quick glance over at the USPTO shows that Taxpayers United doesn't have a federal trademark in the name TAXPAYERS UNITED (word marks that are generic such as this are often hard to enforce, though it can be registered regardless). They might be able to claim a common law trademark since they do business under the name "Taxpayers United." Usually common law trademark claims are much harder to prove under UDRP, but they have been done. More interesting to the issue here is whether the Registrant in this case had any rights or legitimate interests in the name and whether that registration would be deemed "in bad faith."

Likely a registrant pulling a stunt like this has no rights or interests in the name. To establish that you have rights or legitimate interest in the domain, you have to show that people know you commercially under that domain name (so that "Amazon.com" could not suffer loss of their domain name from someone who owns a trademark for "The Amazons," for example, even assuming Amazon didn't hold the trademark to Amazon [they do]) or that you are a licensee or that you have some other kind of fair use. Fair use is the biggest issue here, because the Registrant of this case clearly has no affiliation or rights in the Taxpayers United name. His use, in this case, is political commentary. Usually political commentary can be fair use, but I'm not sure if the use in this particular case, which may not speak to the "heart" is of the matter but instead arguably to "general satire," but I'm not going to get into a legal analysis on the issue because I'm not qualified to do so.

Third, the "bad faith" factor may also be an issue here. Normally this factor is best demonstrated by cybersquatting, whereby registrants intend to profit off of the name by means of trademark confusion (i.e. being a lamprey and hoping people hit your site expecting to get to the trademark holder's website). The registrant here isn't cybersquatting, but there is an argument that they are intentionally trying to profit off of the TAXPAYERS UNITED trademark by capitalizing on the confusion created in this article. This may be sufficient to establish bad faith registration, especially because the registrant registered the website intentionally to deprive the mark-holder of the ability to register the site.

This is all assuming that a generic "common law" trademark holds up, which it might not. This would be a much harder UDRP case to decide than most of the "Looking for 14th century trebuchet construction? We've got your hot 14th century trebuchet construction right here! Hot steamy 14th century trebuchet construction action for your pleasure!" sites banished to the underworld of the internet. [As a side note, look how far we've come that those are no longer the mainstay of Google search results!]

Generally UDRP is favorable to complainants, who get to choose in which forum to lodge their complaint. But the advantage is that if you register a site and lose it under a UDRP complaint, you don't lose anything but the registration (and thus the fees you paid to register) and maybe legal fees if you decide to challenge it; there are no damages.

Is this type of registration a good idea? Well at best, it's not going to hurt you. You might get a good laugh out of it and some site traffic to the ONN, You could lose the site but not be out more than the few bucks for registration. You might tick off a few fans who were duped into clicking on your site, but there's nothing particularly nefarious about the political commentary; you weren't trying to phish or cybersquat or necessarily profit off of the site to the detriment of the holder.

At worst, though, you'll anger an irrational person who will "sue you for all you're worth" in a court of law, consequences be damned. You'd probably be much more likely of winning your case, since you're not doing anything seemingly defamatory or depriving them of property or rights that they explicitly own, but you're still going to pay out the wazoo in hiring a lawyer to represent your defense. Even if you get it dismissed on summary judgment, you're still going to be a few thousand in fees for what would have been easily avoidable.

So that's the tradeoff. Is the laugh worth the perhaps marginal risk of lawsuit? Transferring the domain name to the proper organization is the best thing to do for self-protection. You made your point but you acted in good faith to keep from depriving them of the site. If you find yourself in a similar boat, I'd be mindful of the people from whom you are depriving the registration rights. Are they likely to sue you? If so, don't put your hand in front of your face and say, "Hit my hand!" by registering the site. You could register the site and offer to sell for less than the UDRP filing cost, but that's kind of an asshat thing to do. The two most conscionable things to do are to 1) leave it alone, or 2) register it, poke fun for a bit, then transfer to the "rightful owners" as the registrant did in this case.

Slightly relevant: Since it was brought up about the slight tax increase. I think the big problem people see with huge projects like this is that they almost always go over budget and there is a huge potential for project-creep. Resulting in the money going to some completely irrelevant project.

Speaking in generalities is fun, but unless you actually read this bill and the spending rules imposed by it, it brings absolutely no value to the conversation.

The Usual Disclaimer: IANAL. I am a law student. Law students are incapable of giving legal advice. This is not legal advice. You should trust my advice about as much as you'd trust your former roommate, your dog, or your toaster, assuming none of them have law degrees.

<lots of well thought out text snipped for brevity>

I don't get it. Why is Warhawke getting negative votes for a very useful post? Because it was too long?

This was a fun article and Warhawke's response was very thought-provoking. Thanks, Warhawke. I appreciate the info.

Yeah, I probably would have come up with all kinds of devious plans about what to do with that domain, then been paralyzed by fear after thinking about all the ways I might be sued over it.

AdamM wrote:

He may of influenced the outcome of the election, but it may of not been in the way he thinks.

This really bugs the grammar stickler in me. It is "may HAVE" not "may OF". It blows me away that lots of people write/type this just because it sounds similar when spoken. "May've" is AFAIK only a spoken contraction. It has a red squiggly line under it as I type it.

Is it just me, or does any group whose name includes "taxpayer" instantly lose anyone else's vote?

I'm glad that "taxpayers" are united. However, if the only thing "uniting" you is the fact that you first and foremost identify as payers of taxes - as opposed to beneficiaries of services and common welfare provided by those taxes - there's generally something wrong with you, in my experience. I wouldn't want to work with or for a company called "Paycheck Issuers United" either.

Just a quick tip. If you are an anti-tax organization try naming a front organization and website something relevant to the issue at hand. I think "Taxpayers United" (combining the negative associations of any group coalescing around taxation with an association to Citizens United ... ick.) would have avoided the whole ordeal if they'd just run the ad under the name "Park Goers For Reform" or something less generic.

In all likelihood, their aversion to paying taxes is the only thing that ties this group together. A knee-jerk reaction against anything that might look like a tax increase, regardless of purpose, has pretty much become a hallmark of US politics at all levels.

The Usual Disclaimer: IANAL. I am a law student. Law students are incapable of giving legal advice. This is not legal advice. You should trust my advice about as much as you'd trust your former roommate, your dog, or your toaster, assuming none of them have law degrees.

<lots of well thought out text snipped for brevity>

I don't get it. Why is Warhawke getting negative votes for a very useful post? Because it was too long?

This was a fun article and Warhawke's response was very thought-provoking. Thanks, Warhawke. I appreciate the info.

Because the law of the internet states that every single thing must have at least a few people that are against it.

I could make the most perfect object in existence, paradoxically embodying imperfect perfection without being imperfection. Somebody would hate it for some reason, probably for it being too good. "Haters gonna hate" does come to mind, but this guy is more relevant: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-m ... ver,29922/

Sorry, the internet is as common as common should be. Regardless of the political persuasion, he should have kept the domain out of the hands of the clods who screwed it up. No one, no one, no one is there to rectify a mistake in the capitalist world if such an oversight had been made. And yes, you have to react exactly as your opposition would have in the same circumstances. He owed them nothing and should bill them for his time and efforts to straighten this out. This is 101 incompetence going on here We develop nothing without securing the domain first

This actually happened to Microsoft, and some Good Samaritan scooped up the domain and transferred it back.

Sorry, the internet is as common as common should be. Regardless of the political persuasion, he should have kept the domain out of the hands of the clods who screwed it up. No one, no one, no one is there to rectify a mistake in the capitalist world if such an oversight had been made. And yes, you have to react exactly as your opposition would have in the same circumstances. He owed them nothing and should bill them for his time and efforts to straighten this out. This is 101 incompetence going on here We develop nothing without securing the domain first

I don't get it. Why is Warhawke getting negative votes for a very useful post? Because it was too long?

This was a fun article and Warhawke's response was very thought-provoking. Thanks, Warhawke. I appreciate the info.

Welcome to comment voting, where people don't vote based on the quality of the information being presented, but on the source or whether they agree to it.

I once again question whether we're over this yet.

kevjohn wrote:

Law student = future lawyer. Lawyers get downvoted.

When someone who has expertise on a subject takes time out of their day to give you advice you should probably avoid disparaging them for doing so. Regardless of their profession; those of us in the legal field are people too. You don't know exactly what I do (hint: I am not a trial lawyer), how much money I make (hint: I work in the public sector), and you certainly can't judge much about me at all aside from the content of my postings and a label that identifies my "profession," however inaccurate it might be in the context of public consciousness.

The faster and cheaper course of action in this case would be a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution (UDRP) claim. For a few thousand, you can plead case in front of an arbitration panel that a domain name infringes upon a trademark in which you have rights and get that domain name transferred to you if the registrant has no legitimate rights and has registered and/or is using the domain in bad faith. UDRP claims involve proving three elements: 1) Complainant has trademark in the name, 2) Registrant has no rights in the domain name, and 3) Registrant has registered and/or is using the Domain Name in bad faith (whether it's "and" or "or" somewhat depends on the arbitration panel you plead before).

You might be privy to the law - but you might want to go study up on domain names a little better.

Something like Microsoft.com (.net .org .abcdefg etc....) if someone found an open doamin and tried to extort or squat it - then Yes in that case you are correct.

However for the case in point of this article:

nstaxpayersunited.com

As easy as this does refer to "Northwest Suburban" it could easily refer to "North Scranton" or "National Submarine" or "New Soup" or "Not your Shit" or many many other possibilities.

My discalimer - I'm not a lawyer and not an expert by any means - but this domain name is highly ambiguous for a court to have ruled that it be legally handed over to the Northwest Suburban Taxpayers United group on those grounds. Now if the URL read: northwestsuburbantaxpayersunited.com - then Yes.

(hell Apple, Inc. should feel damned lucky that they got in early enough to grab their URL instead of Apple Records or Billy Bob's Homemade Apple Pie LLC)

So that's the tradeoff. Is the laugh worth the perhaps marginal risk of lawsuit?

You're missing the point here. Anyone advocating pro or con on a political issue is exposed to the risk of lawsuits simply by virtue of their advocacy. The issue here, however, is one of first amendment rights and ethics.

The question isn't one of risk, it's of ethics. Whether or not one should engage in what might be considered a "dirty trick" to advocate for one's position.

One would surmise that a person has a right to express his opinion about his opponents' political savvy, or even their critical thinking capabilities, the question is; is it ethical to make that point by inconveniencing, or even hobbling, your opponents' efforts to enlist support for their position?

It seems to me that, he has every right to "assist" his opponents by redirecting the previously unregistered domain to the correct page, and it's within his first amendment rights to make note of the assistance he's provided by some kind of redirect page that explains the situation. Especially if he's willing to ultimately surrender the domain.

But just redirecting it to the Onion? Funny, but perhaps not ethically sound.

He should have put up a parody site. By clearly identifying it as parody and not using it to sell or profit from, Bob would have been 100% in the clear and could have made fun of them all day long. He could still be sued, but the case would be a slam-dunk for Bob.